PROSPECTS OF HIGH INTENSITY HADRON BEAM FACILITY IN JAPAN
SHOJI NAGAMIYA
Accelerator sciences in the world are heading towards two frontier directions, the highest energy regime (LHC, for example) and the regime of the highest intensity and power. In Japan a plan has been discussed among the community to construct the highest power proton accelerators in the world. The original plan, which was proposed jointly by the nuclear science community, neutron science community and the meson science community, was the construction of the Japan Hadron Facility (JHF) at KEK. It consists of a) 3 GeV proton synchrotron at 200ƒÊA (which is 0.6 MW) and b) 50 GeV proton synchrotron at 10ƒÊA (which is 0.5 MW). The former will create forefront sciences with pulsed neutron beams, muon beams, and target-fragment type RI beams, where was the latter will open a new field of hadron physics using high-intensity kaon beams, antiproron beams and other exotic beams. This proposal was supported also by the neighboring communities in Japan, such as the high-energy physics community and biological science community.
Recently, however, a new initiative was proposed by the Japanese Government for construction of high-intensity proton accelerators in Japan. The idea was to combine the JHF project described above with the Neutron Science Project (NSP) which was proposed by the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI). In the latter, the main focus was neutron sciences with spallation neutron beams. In addition, R&D work on nuclear transmutation was considered there. The original plan of the NSP aimed at 5 MW proton beams at the GeV region, using a superconducting linac. Since the summer of 1998 we have been making efforts to combine these two proposals, JHF form KEK and NSP from JAERI, into one unified "high-intensity proton accelerator project".
AT the JSPS meeting in June, I would like to report a flavor of sciences which can be developed at the power frontier proton accelerators. In addition, I would like to report the present status of the above joint project between KEK and JAERI.